No place to hide

Jan 15, 2009

Just after I spoke to you on the phone the
other day, we had to leave, says Mohammed. The Israelis were shelling all
around us, and so many of the local people fled. We left too, but we had nowhere
else to go but the school down the street.

Mohammed Al Majdawali lives in Jabaliya refugee
camp. He's a filmmaker and also volunteers for the Middle East Children's Alliance, which works with children across Gaza. I called him a few days ago to see if he was
OK under these horrific circumstances. I can send you photos from Gaza, he told me earnestly down the crackly phone.
If you tell me who you want to speak to, I can go and find them. Anything you
need to help you document this holocaust, just ask me.

But by the time he called me back later the
same day, Mohammed and his family were sheltering in a local Jabaliya school
which has been transformed into a UN shelter for internally displaced Gazans. He
and his family are now in Al Fakhoura school, where 40 civilians were killed
last week after the Israeli military fired four artillery shells towards the
school. After the carnage at Al Fakhoura who the hell would choose to shelter
there? But Mohammed and his family, like the hundreds of other civilians who
fled the same neighbourhood, have nowhere else to hide.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the
biggest UN agency working in Gaza, is doing its utmost to assist the people of
Jabaliya, but conditions at Al Fakhoura school are rough. There are more than 50
people in each classroom. says Mohammed. Some have no electricity, and we
have nothing to sleep on but the floor. He says most of the new occupants at
the school are women and children, but some distraught parents have been out on
the streets, searching for their kids who went missing amidst the chaos and mass
panic of people fleeing for their lives.

Thousands of people across
the Gaza Strip are now fleeing for their lives. UNRWA, which has turned schools
into shelters for the internally displaced across Gaza,
estimates more than 35,500 people are now taking refuge in these shelters, and other
UN agencies working in Gaza say growing
pockets of the civilian population are trapped in their homes. One of the most
frightening reports of civilians being trapped in their homes has come from the
Gaza City-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which has continued
to report on the human rights situation every day throughout this blood bath.
On 13 January, PCHR reported its staff had received many phone calls from
villagers trapped inside Khzaa village, east of Khan Younis, pleading for help.
The villagers said local families were being detained inside their homes by the
Israeli military, and Israeli troops were demolishing houses while families
were trapped inside them, and firing towards them if they tried to escape.

The
death toll inside Gaza is now
around 1,054, and more than 4,000 people have been maimed and injured. PCHR
estimates that 85 per cent of the dead are civilians, and 35 per cent of them
are children. Last night Hamas finally formally accepted a proposal from Egypt
for an immediate ceasefire. The proposal calls for the Israeli military to
withdraw immediately from the Gaza Strip, and for the opening of Gaza's
borders - but Israel
has said its operation inside Gaza
will continue nonetheless.

As
I write this blog, Israeli troops have now advanced well into Gaza
City. Staff at the Al Aqsa Hospital
in Gaza City
report the hospital is now surrounded by Israeli troops, and the hospital has
received more 150 phone calls from local people, including civilians who've
been injured and are now trapped in the area. The horrific death toll in Gaza
is going to rise as the Israeli military launches its final massive assaults. This
is not a war against the people of Gaza,
it is a massacre.